Mascara
by tenthrose
Summary: One morning, Rose Tyler finds the application wand missing from her last bottle of mascara.


**Written for Doctor/Rose LAS over on LJ, in which it received no votes, positive or negative. The prompt was 'Something Borrowed'. Obviously, nothing is mine.**

The small white tube appears insignificant in its cluttered surroundings. To one side is a model of the Eiffel Tower, purchased the day it opened to the public. To the other, a scent changing marble from a market on a planet with a violet sky. The little tube does nothing to hide its far more humble origin, the cheap cosmetics isle from the Boots next to the Powell Estates.

Rose picks up the little tube. The lid with the attached application wand is missing. She must have forgotten to put it back. She places the tube back on top of her dresser, and looks around for the other half. She moves aside tissues and photographs. No mascara wand.

The wand is not inside a novelty mug from the first Lunar Olympics. It was not dropped on the floor, hidden in piles of trainers and unwashed hoodies and t-shirts and jeans. Giving up, Rose pulls open her dresser drawer to fetch a new thing of mascara. It's empty, save for more trinkets and photographs. This must have been her last bottle.

Eyelashes naked, Rose leaves her bedroom and walks down the hall. "Doctor!" she calls out as she enters the console room. "Can we pop back to London for a bit? I need to go shopping'"

"That's the problem with you, you always want to go home" the Doctor grumbles.

"An' what's wrong with home?

"Your..." the Doctor begins, but thinks better of it. "What's wrong with the rest of the universe?"

"Nothing!" Rose insists, defensive. "I just don't know where else to get mascara"

"There's this fantastic little make up parlour in the 45th century. I know the owner"

Rose laughs, grateful that the row was cut short. "How do you know about make up parlours?" she asks incredulously

"There's a brand of lipstick that's perfect as a lubricant for the chronomaxtrix tubules. I need some more of it anyway. Get whatever else you like there, it'll be my treat"

"You mean the psychic paper's treat?" Rose ribs gently.

"Sort of, yeah" the Doctor answers, plugging in the coordinates

The TARDIS lands, and arm in arm, the Doctor and Rose walk out into the shop. Rose decides that she likes the alien mascara (as long as the Doctor doesn't tell her what its made out of), but its months before she thinks of that day again.

"Rose! Pull the spatiotransportation microlever" the Doctor shouts from the other side of the madly shaking console.

"What?" she asks, scanning the various little objects on the control panel before her and trying to pick out what might be a spatio something.

"The spatio..." the Doctor cuts himself off "Little black wand, about eight centimetres long. One end of it has hairlike spines in a spiral pattern, and the other's a wider white cylinder, and says 'Boots Volume Definition" on it. Why does anyone want to define the volume of their boots? Does it matter how many cubic centimetres of water fit in your wellies? Well... there was this one time on the Mississippi with my friend Sam Clemens... I had to bail the water out of the canoe with my shoe, and then I got a frog in it! I named him Herbert. Now that was a day!" he babbles happily.

Rose pulls the microlever and the shaking stops. Only then does she realise what's in her hand. "Hold on, that's my old mascara wand"

"What?"

"You spaciothing is my old mascara wand. It went missing ages ago. Where did you find it?"

"The old spatiotransportation microlever broke, but I lost the spare back at Vlad the Impalers castle, so I had to look all around the TARDIS for a new one. Even in the garden! Blimey, try asking a Caltydian Flytrap for a microlever! Anyway, I found this in your room. Perfect size and shape with the exact right spiral patterns of soft spines to redirect vortex pulses! I just had to unscrew it from a little tube!"

"You took it from my room without telling me?" Rose asks, surprised.

"Wellll... I borrowed it,"

A series of emotions flash through Rose's mind. She wonders if she should feel hurt or angry, but looking into the Doctor's big brown confused puppy eyes, she just laughs. He's brilliant, and he's kind, he's everything in the world to her, and he seems to have been everywhere and done everything, and yet so often she catches him completely ignorant of the polite, human, way of doing things. Her brilliant, daft 900 year old man-child. "Rude and not ginger," she smiles at him.

"Yup!" The Doctor grins, popping out the p. "Why were you defining the volume of your boots?" he asks after a moment.

A few weeks later, Rose finds the laces missing from one of her shoes.


End file.
